Earlier this past week I heard a woman in her fifties offer a testimonial to her recently deceased father following a life spanning 85 years.  Her words were an eloquent and touching tribute to her “daddy” whom she remembered with great affection through her childhood and adult life.  She recalled especially an incident when she was in fifth grade and had run into trouble with her elementary school teacher.  They just couldn’t see eye to eye.  Her grades plummeted.  But rather than condemning her, her father encouraged her with small gifts he would bring back from business trips.  Encouraged – not condemned – the little girl pulled herself together and in time resolved whatever difficulties she was having.  Her performance in school improved.  Today she’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of orchestral music.  Understandably her father was very proud of her achievement.  Perhaps the fifth grade teacher might be proud, too, and maybe a little bit surprised.

Sometimes it’s not clear that people we’re trying to nurture will come out right.  And to some extent, no matter our age, God may wonder how we’re going to come out.  But like a good parent, God is an encouraging presence, and in hope for the best in us continues to prod and push and love us forward.

It’s that God Paul speaks for in Ephesians.  God would have every reason to condemn us now and then for falling so far short of the faith we profess.  But God chooses instead to reveal a nature that forgives if we will truly repent and turn ourselves around again.  So when Paul gives the very sound and useful advice to the members of the church in Ephesus, he does so that they might rise to the new life in Christ to which they have been called.  They have already been forgiven and invited to move forward into a life characterized by traits opposed to the low road to which all of us occasionally fall.

What advice does Paul give?  The first item reminds us of the Ten Commandments:  “ . . . let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”  In other words, “you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  That’s the ninth commandment carved in stone on Moses’ tablet carried down from the top of Mount Sinai.  And as Moses’ commandments carry the authority of God, so Paul’s words recall the teachings of Jesus that call us to a productive and harmonious life with one another.

We learned in Sunday School that we should not lie.  But as children we might have thought only that lying means we’re not nice.  And everyone knows that Christians are supposed to be nice.  As adults, however, we understand a more important reason not to build our lives on lies.  Falsehood breaks down not only the individual who loses all integrity in the eyes of others, it also breaks down the communal life we have been called to share.  Lying destroys community because, as Paul says, we are members of one another. 

Interdependent relationships sometimes resemble spider webs.  Touch one part and the quiver is felt to the outer circles.  Speak lies to one another, and the fabric of our life together unravels.  When we cannot trust to know the truth from one another, we cannot live productively together.  That goes for family in the home as well as family in the church.  A family infested by lies fails.  That’s why Paul’s advice is so useful.

And what about the way we handle anger?  Jesus was not so naïve as to think that people do not get angry.  Quite to the contrary, Jesus told us that sometimes we should get angry.  There are things we should hate – like injustice and evil – but we should turn the heat of anger into ways that lead to correction and renewal.  All our great social movements – from racial injustice to striving for peace in the world – have begun with a good and healthy measure of anger.  But generalized anger against one another for no good reason gets us nowhere that we ultimately want to be.  Anger agitates us and such agitation clouds good judgment.  Anger unattended grows into rage which destroys relationships.

Better to attend to the anger that needs resolving.  Get to it quickly, Paul says.  How many times have we heard the old adage that grows from this very place in the Bible: “. . . do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  Useful advice, indeed, not only for community but for all intimate relationships of marriage and partnering.  Before sleeping on a problem, try to work it out.  Then turn out the light and let the subconscious have a go of it in dreams.

Not many of us are thieves in the common way that word is used, but we are enjoined nonetheless to see about not taking from others what might lead to their bad fortune.  Again, thievery in any form eats away at authentic community in which everyone contributes.  This is a good question for all of us: To what degree does the work we do contribute to the general good?  If you think of it, there is much in most kinds of work that can lead to the growth of community.  In that context, then, Paul challenges us to imagine what it would be like if we based our vocational decisions not on whether the position we seek will bring us the biggest paycheck, highest status, or most comfortable life, but whether it will allow us to serve one another’s needs.

“Let no evil come out of your mouths,” Paul says, “but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”  If we tried to follow this advice – if we were intent on taking these words to heart – then most of us would think more often before we speak and we would speak far less often than we do.  So many apologies are made necessary, are they not, by having spoken in too much haste or with too much rancor? 

And the final piece of advice is that we not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.  To grieve is to regret with sadness, and the Bible is full of images of God grieving over the sin of those God loves.  Over our sin.  We can have that effect on God, for God is like a loving parent who wants us to make it, to grow into that image of our creation, an image reflecting the loving heart of God.  God asks of our actions only that we imitate the ways of God we have seen in Jesus Christ, the image of God in human form. 

The true nature of love is to love generously and to grow in that love.  I suspect that none of us would willingly disappoint the ones we love or cause them grief.  The same is true in our relationship with God.  We do not wish to do that which would grieve the heart of God.  Rather we would joyfully turn toward those acts that bring God joy and away from those that do not.  Paul gives us the advice he does that we might be encouraged to meet the mark we set in response to God’s love and forgiveness of us.

You see, all this advice from Paul is meant for us to assume the “new life” we have in Christ.  In that memorial service early last week in which the daughter thanked her father’s spirit that had given her so much love, we used these words:

When we were baptized in Christ Jesus,

we were baptized into his death.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism

   into death,

So that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the

   glory of the Father,

we too might live a new life.

For if we have been united with Christ in a

   death like his,

we will certainly be united with him in a

   resurrection like his.

Baptism and death are the true bookends for the Christian life.  We go from the old self to the new creation in baptism.  Think for a moment of baptisms of full-body immersion.  That image can help us here.  Think of John baptizing Jesus in the River Jordan, completely immersing him and then raising him up.  As we go with Jesus under the waters of death, the old self is killed off and we are raised with Christ into newness of life. 

In the early baptismal liturgies of the church, the baptismal candidates faced the west and renounced the forces of darkness.  Then they turned to the east at sunrise and proclaimed their allegiance to the light of the world.  They literally stripped off their old clothes, became immersed in the baptismal waters, and on the other side put on the new garments of adoption by Christ as children of God.  In that way they were brought into the community of faith.

Paul is speaking to the Ephesians and to us as children of new creation.  We have come through the waters of baptism and are commanded not to go back to Egypt.  Once the baptized person puts on the new white garment, the old clothes are cast away.  Paul calls us all to remember who we are now in Christ and not to turn back to slavery to oppression and to the power of death.  We have been called to a new way of life, and the advice he gives us to live up to it is useful indeed.

In one of the prayers at baptism we hear these words: “ . . . by the sealing of your Holy Spirit you have bound us to your service, [O God].  Renew in these your servants the covenant you made with them at their Baptism.  Send them forth in the power of that Spirit to perform the service you set before them.”

Come to think of it, that’s not a bad prayer for any day of our lives, is it?